Meeting Betsy
by fee-kh
Summary: Spike and Buffy on a road trip.
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: I don't own either BtVs nor anything by MJD, not saying who the latter is as that would give away the plot too soon.

A/N: This popped into my head while I was slaving away at True to your heart. Whenever people get saved I get stuck, or maybe I have problems with the ends of things.

**Meeting Betsy**

**Chapter 1**

"I can't take it anymore. This stupid voice, running in my head. Non-stop." Spike banged his head on the crypt wall, hoping against hope that it would stop that whiny little voice from inserting itself in his head yet again and driving him insane, or more insane than he already was.

Just at that moment the crypt door slammed open and his personal nemesis stormed in, on a mission to destroy his life - again - no doubt. If he didn't love her so much, it would really be driving him insane.

"What do you want?" Spike ground out, trying to suppress the agony that ran through his mind.

"Where is she?"

"Who?" Spike knew he was pushing his luck, but figured that with any luck Buffy would beat his brain out and he would be blissfully free from 'the Voice' for a couple of hours. Belatedly he realised that Buffy had answered and was pissed off because he was not paying attention. The little cow took insane pleasure in grinding his attentions to dust beneath her feet but god help him if he ignored her.

"Sorry, what did you say? Wasn't paying attention."

He could practically see the steam rise from her ears and chuckled inside, then winced as that stupid background noise started up - again!

"I - am - looking - for - Dawn. Where is she?"

Spike took perverse pleasure in pissing the slayer off and took care to enunciate as slowly as she had. "I - don't - know. Why would she be here?"

Buffy sagged. "She's always here. Have you seen her?"

"No, slayer. I haven't."

Just then Buffy started as her beeper vibrated. Spike tried to muster a snarky grin and failed miserably.

"Oh. She's home. Well, then I'll go."

"Don't let me stop you."

Spike turned away and tried to concentrate enough to get himself down to the cave and his bed.

Buffy turned to the door, then with a muffled groan swung back and blurted out with: "Areyoualright?" She immediately hated herself for asking. Why open that can of worms.

Spike only stared at her as if she had grown an extra head. Buffy got huffy: "What I am not allowed to be concerned?"

"Well, no."

Buffy and Spike shuffled in their place for a minute, the tableau only broken when Spike swore again and banged a fist against his skull and muttered to himself.

"Seriously what's wrong, because if the chip is acting up then I am going to have to stake you." For some reason Buffy chose not to examine to closely, she did not feel as happy about that thought than she thought she would have.

"S'not the chip." Spike debated with himself as to whether he should tell her the reason, then decided what the hell. If he was lucky she might stake him and he wouldn't have that thing in his head anymore.

"We have a new queen. She is calling me."

"WHAT?"


	2. Chapter 2

Disclaimer: I do not own BTVS or anything by MJD. Although there are enough hints that you should know who that is by now.

**Meeting Betsy**

**Chapter 2**

Buffy was sure she had heard wrong. "A what is calling you?"

"Our queen."

"You have a queen?"

"Yes."

"And you're not talking about the Queen Elizabeth of England, cause that would be too much to hope for right?"

"Yes."

"Quit it with the one word answers. Spill now, before I .."

"Stake me. Please, don't hold yourself back. At least then I would have peace and quiet. No stupid whiny voice in my head and no stupid whiny slayer in front of me."

"Hey! I resent that. Now spill."

Spike huffed. Reprieve had once again retreated into the distance. Plopping down onto the sarcophagus behind him, he prepared for a Buffy-grilling of the not-so-good kind.

"It's like this. Vampires are a bit feudal, you know that right?"

"Giles told me, sires and all that."

"It's a bit more complicated than that. Sires are like overlords, the children owe them allegiance and in return they get protection. Some are better at it than others." The last remark came out more bitter than he had intended. It would not do to give the slayer extra ammo.

"Not all vampires are like the ones here. The hell mouth sort of fries your brain and makes you go all…" Spike waved a hand in the air as he tried to find a suitable word.

"wiggy?"

"Okay, wiggy will have to do. Anyway at the top of all these feudal lords is the king."

"I though you said it was a queen."

"Just listen you stupid bint and I'll tell you. As I was saying. At the top is the king. He passes judgement and lays down the law and his archive keeps track of who is where."

Buffy looked at him with wide eyes, not sure if she liked the society that Spike was describing. It was much too human. She shook the thought off her like a dog does water.

Spike continued, oblivious to the thoughts running over her face: "A couple of days ago I heard the old kingwas dead, that's when it started."

"When what started? 'Cause the whole you insane thing started way before that."

Spike could only glare when he clearly just wanted to rip her head off.

"When a new king or queen is created, all vampires feel the call to visit and pledge their allegiance. The queen then decides what will happen to them. Either she accepts you or -"

"Or?" Buffy prompted.

"Or she kills you. If you are not up to scratch."

Buffy looked thoughtful: "And you have the chip, so are afraid you are not enough."

Spike was gob smacked at Buffy's insight, causing said young woman to go all defensive - again: "Hey! I have a brain. And I use it. Occasionally."

Then she brightened. "So what's your problem? Just don't go." She felt very pleased with herself. Buffy to the rescue. Problem solved.

"Have you even been listening? It's not that simple, slayer. I feel the call day and night, incessantly." He looked so tortured, Buffy almost felt sorry for him.

"So go. What's the worst that could happen?"

Spike glared at her, convinced she had just jinxed any journey he might have taken.

"I'll go with you."

"Well then the answer is nothing."

"We can leave - Hey! Did you just say I'm the worst thing that could happen? Cause then I am so going to stake your ass."

Spike shrugged. Wait until she found out she would have to pretend to be his sheep.

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Let's get his straight." Giles said.

"You're going on a road trip?" Willow provided.

"With SPIKE!" Xander squeaked.

"That's so cool. Can I come?" Dawn interjected.

"Yes to the road trip. No to the come-withage."

"No fair. I never get to do anything fun." The young woman slunk off to add another scathing entry to the Dawn-Files.

"And why are you going with Spike?" Giles had to resist the incessant urge to clean his spectacles, they were already wearing thin.

"Well first there is the queen thing. I could totally find out things, get the inside scoop. I bet there's nothing about this in the diaries, am I right or am I right. And then there is the insane Spike thing. So not a good thing."

"May I remind you of the spell that went wrong only a week ago. Are you sure your sympathy for Spike's plight is not just a left-over of the emotions you were forced to feel then?"

Willow cringed and pushed the cookie plate closer to the others.

"What sympathy?" The slayer said a tad too fast. "I'll take him there, we meet the new queen of the damned and I stake her. End of story."

Giles did not look convinced, while Willow and Xander just looked worried. Buffy decided to wheedle. She was a champion wheedler.

"Oh, please. Spring Break starts tomorrow. I won't miss anything and don't tell me you are not curious about the whole 'vampires have a feudal system' thingy."

"Well it does throw up interesting questions-"

"Alright! Road Trip!"

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Spike was furious. First that female had insisted on coming with him. Then she had said it was for his protection because now that he was - god help her if he ever got the chip out - neutered, he couldn't help himself. And then that harpy had made him clean his car. Too good to set foot in it otherwise. Some of the rubbish in there was practically antique, not to mention the sentimental value.

And now she was humming. The bottle song.

"Woman! Will you please shut up! And keep your eyes on the road."

Buffy just sent him a sunny smile and turned the radio on - to a poppy station. Playing Take That. And then she started singing again.

It was going to be a long trip.

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"So, what's her ´name?" Buffy was getting bored.

"Elizabeth the One."

"You mean Elizabeth the First."

"No. I meant Elizabeth the One."

"What kinda name is that?"

"Yours I thought."

"Oh"

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"Blood oranges. Have to have blood oranges." Spike was muttering to himself as he scoured the aisles of the supermarket.

Buffy trailed after him, highly amused. This was the third supermarket they had been in on the quest to find blood oranges. Her eyes lit on something in the cooler department.

"Hey Spi-ike." She warbled. "I found some blood orange juice. Does that help?"

Her only response was a frustrated groan that caused some shoppers to drop their things in fright. Buffy smiled to herself. This road trip was turning out to be fun.


	3. Chapter 3

Disclaimer: I do not own BtVs or anything written by Mary J. Davidson. I'm just messing around.

A/N: I hope you enjoy this. It's a bit if a difficult birth at the moment. Comedy is warring with drama. I keep having these thoughts that slide away from comedy. And drama is winning. I'd had these thoughts about the hell mouth making vamps all wonky - and then read a couple of stories that had just that premise. Darn, foiled again. But I'm sticking with it. Not so much the happy go lucky comedy, but sort of sliding into an exploration of Buffy and Spike. After all it is not the destination, it is the journey that counts. But there will be Buffy-Betsy interaction; just later.

_**Chapter 3**_

They had been on the road now for three hours and miraculously nobody was dead yet. Although it had been a near thing once or twice.

* * *

"Are we there yet?"

Silence

"Are we there yet?"

Silence

"Are we there yet?"

Silence

"Are we -"

"Will you shut up for five minutes, please. We have been on the road for twenty minutes. How could we possibly be there yet if this is a thirty hour trip according to the map."

"Aw, Spikey. I was bored. And tease-the-Spike is such a fun game.

"Slayer. You are more annoying than a Balrog demon on caffeine."

"What's a Balrog?"

"Big one, long whiplash tail, skin is on fire and eyes like embers. Huge bugger. Starts singing after the third latte. Not a pretty sight and you don't even want to know what it does after an espresso."

"So, why haven't I ever heard of it?"

"I killed it."

Buffy said nothing.

"How was I to know it was the last of it's kind."

* * *

"Wow, they're so pretty!" Buffy gazed in awe at the dusky mountains around them, framed by the star-lit sky.

"Have you never been here, Slayer?" Spike was surprised. The mountains were right outside her door, as it were.

"Well, we never really had the chance to travel. You know in the beginning we did travel. The whole family would go away together, mostly Florida, Hawaii once. That was the first holiday after I was called. I'd never seen a beach so white. I could have stayed there forever." Her voice trailed off.

Spike took his eyes off the road for a second to glance at her, taking in her saddened expression with a frown. "What happened?"

Buffy sighed. "The slayer happened, of course. We stayed there for a grand total of 96 hours. The first night there the hotel had a luau, to welcome the new guests, you know. Really pretty. This big bonfire was in the middle of the beach with all there tables set up around it, and blankets if you wanted to sit on the sand. Flowers everywhere, and all these people in their holiday clothes. All so relaxed, without a care in the world." As Buffy talked, Spike saw the image she was painting with her words and put a younger, softer Buffy in the middle of it, laughing at the sparks from the flames and giddy with excitement of staying up the night.

"That's when I saw him. There was this surfer vampire. I mean dressed as a surfer, but pale as the moon, you know. Don't know why nobody twigged him before then. Anyway, he was walking off with Dawn! She was only 12! She's always been tall and pretty, so the vamp probably thought she would be easy to fool. I got her away from him - had to fight her as much as him - verbally that is. Was still in sight of the fire, so he gave up without too much fuss. Wasn't completely dumb, you see." She sighed again and Spike realised that what was to come would not be nice.

In the darkness of the car, it was easy for Buffy to finally purge the feelings she had long suppressed. "I followed him to his hideaway. There were thirty of them in this cave system shacking up with a couple of demons just because they could."

Spike whistled. "That was you!"

Buffy shrugged, oddly pleased that Spike had heard of her so long before he had come Sunnydale. "Heard of that, did ya?"

"Well, yeah! 'S not every day one girl takes on a large nest of vamps without any backup or weapons and lives to tell the tale - even if she is the slayer."

"Took me two days to work my way through there and the no weapons thing is not exactly true, they had lots of handy furniture standing around all over the place. Burnt the place to the ground in the end and stumbled out. The fire undermined parts of the property and the eighteenth hole on the golf course collapsed. The hotel asked us to leave."

"Ungrateful gits." Spike growled, then noticed her incredulous look. "Well, 's true. Least they coulda done was say thank you, for saving their guests 'n' all."

Buffy felt a blush start somewhere around her navel, quickly rising, and turned away.

Spike swallowed and tried to get rid of the strange mood pervading the car.

"Then again. Maybe you should thank them. Got to blow something up."

"What?" Buffy squeaked.

"Well, you know. Your old high school, the cave system, Sunnydale High. Maybe we should call you Buffy the real estate slayer." He sniggered.

"You are such an idiot, Spike!" Buffy huffed.

* * *

Spike cracked his neck and absently rubbed his nose, much as he had down in his long ago days at Eton, and glanced over at the slayer curled up in sleep on the passenger side.

Squinting ahead into the darkness, he could just make out the sign announcing a lay-by.

As soon as they had stopped, he was out of the car like a shot, stretching his back until his spine popped. Leaning back into the car he was faced with a dilemma. The slayer was still fast asleep and waking her too suddenly would be detrimental to his health if she went from sleeping straight into slay mode.

Sliding back into the car, he very, very carefully laid a hand on her back and began to rub it in slow circles, trying to ease her awake.

"Slayer. Come on. Wakey, wakey, time for little slayers to rise and shine."

"Mmmmhhh. Five more minu's." Buffy mumbled, then turned and curled into Spike, stretching on the bench seat until her head was pillowed on his thigh, oblivious to the vampire frozen in shock , hands raised in mid air.

'I'm dead.' He thought, then relaxed when nothing else happened, like the slayer waking abruptly and realising where she was, and then beating the crap out of him. The larger part of him snickered however, cataloguing the blackmail material this presented and completely ignoring the tiny spark at his centre dancing with glee that she felt safe enough to sleep around him.

Placing his hand on her bare arm - trying to ignore how soft it was and how it had felt twined around his neck - he resumed his gentle circles.

"Come on, little slayer. Sun's coming up. Time for good little girls to wake up."

Buffy slowly stirred, nuzzling into his thigh. Slowly one hand came up and rubbed her nose.

One final twitch of the nose and Buffy's eyes blinked open. All she could see was black. Blinking a couple of times, she realised that the black was in fact black jeans, which looked awfully familiar.

"Awake then?" A sardonic voice asked.

Buffy yelped and went from horizontal to vertical so fast she saw stars.

"SPIKE!"

"The one and only." Spike tried and failed to repress his inner poet who was rhapsodising about her flushed cheeks and sleepy come-hither eyes.

Rubbing her eyes, Buffy tried to get over the shock of waking up in Spike's lap. "Where are we?"

"Layby, just west'a Death Valley."

"Why'd we stop?" Buffy was still finding it hard to come to complete wakefulness.

"Well, the sun's coming up in about an hour. You're gonna haveta drive. Think you can keep it in a straight line?"

"Humpf" She scrunched up her forehead in thought. "What about you? Don't want you to go poof after all."

"Why, slayer, I didn't think you cared." He arched a scarred eyebrow in her direction. "I'm gonna be in the trunk."

That woke Buffy up faster than a bucket of icy water. "Uhuh. No way! That's just…" Words failed her.

"Just what, slayer? It'll save time."

"No! I am not driving your dead body around. Forget it. What if we get stopped and they open the trunk. You'll go poof and I'll be arrested. No way! Where's the nearest motel? We'll stay there for the night - I mean day."

After mentioning driving past one only twenty minutes earlier, Spike could only watch as Hurricane Buffy swung into action and organised everything to her liking.

* * *

Half an hour later, Buffy was less sure of herself when it turned out that the motel only had one room left.

"Well, great idea while it lasted slayer."

"We'll take it." Buffy watched with satisfaction as the vampire's jaw dropped.

Her bravado slipped somewhat when she walked into the room and saw the double bed dominating it. To overplay her embarrassment she bustled to the bed and plopped her bag on it, then pulling the curtains closed tightly so not even a stray ray of early dawn light could sneak into the room, plunging it into twilight. Although her head knew that Spike could see her perfectly well, it helped that she couldn't see him. Ostrich mentality at it's best.

Spike watched her with amusement, deciding to forego his usual snark routine. Casting a jaundiced eye at the extremely uncomfortable-looking chairs by the window, is inner demon bowed to the habits of the gentleman, which his mother had once taken great pains to ingrain on the fibres of his very being.

"You want to take the bed, slayer? I'll be on the floor." He was more than amused by the slayer's dumbfounded reaction.

"That's … you … why?" she stuttered.

Spike flushed a little, glad she was unable to see it in the darkened room and said nothing.

Buffy took a deep breath, curbing her usual response to Spike-niceness. Reasoning with herself that he had a chip and would be unable to do anything to her that hurt, she ignored the little voice in her that insisted that that may be the case, but the chip would not stop him from doing things to her that would make her feel very good indeed.

"Um, Spike. That's probably really uncomfortable and - uhm - the bed's really big." She blushed and ended in a rush. "Andifyoutouchmeiamsogoingtostakeyourass."

All thought processes in Spike ground to a halt. The demon didn't know what to do. This was unprecedented. The void was filled by William.

"That's a very nice gesture to be sure. I'll tell you what. You lie under the sheets and I'll lie under the top blanket. That's what they used to do in way stations when there was no room. Entirely proper, I assure you."

Buffy ducked her head and fiddled with the zip on her duffle bag. "Thanks, Spike. Uhm. I'll go change."

Ten minutes later a freshly scrubbed Buffy came out of the bathroom, dressed in an oversize sweater and jogging pants, studiously avoiding any glance in Spike's direction. Moving to the side of the bed closest to the window, she slid under sheets and blanket, all without a single word or gesture.

Spike took his turn in the bathroom, stripping down to his jeans for lack of better sleepware. He brushed his teeth purely for the sake of the taste of mint it imparted and after pottering around for a few more minutes ventured back into the bedroom, hoping the slayer had fallen asleep in the meantime.

Luck seemed to be on his side, as he was greeted by slow, even breaths. Silently he made his way to the bed and slid under the blanket, just as he had promised. Unbidden and not entirely unwanted the thought hit him that this would have been his future - with a few alterations - if Willow's spell had been nothing of the sort. Going to sleep next to Buffy, with her face the last thing he saw and waking up to her first thing in the evening. Ruthlessly he quashed the sentiment. He was a vampire dammit - lusting after the blood of the innocent and all that, not some love-sick puppy, pining for his lady-love. Careful not to disturb his bed-partner, Spike rolled on his side, closed his eyes and attempted to sleep.


End file.
